15 Million Overwatch Players Around the Globe and Counting

Blizzard’s latest foray into gaming has turned out to be even more of a resounding success than it first appeared. 15 million Overwatch players have now played the game across the world, five million more than played the beta. Altogether, those 15 million players have accumulated over 500 million hours of game time.

Overwatch’s success lies not only with Blizzard’s pedigree: the game’s tight controls, wide variety of characters, beautiful graphics, and background information have also helped to grab people’s attention. And that’s saying nothing of the competitive mode, which Blizzard guards like a mother cat to prevent cheaters and hackers from entering and ruining the fun.

Over 9.7 million people played the Overwatch beta in the month before the game officially released, making it one of the biggest that Blizzard has ever done, even in the face of various World of Warcraft betas. Blizzard’s steady stream of new character teases, such as Ana last month and Sombra getting ever closer, have only made more fans that have added up to the 15 million Overwatch players playing now.

The game’s community has also taken the game and run with it, making such creations as Gremlin D.Va (with her “moms” Pharah and Mercy), Dad 76 (Soldier 76 acting like a father to the younger players) and more, while drawing the team getting up to all sorts of hijinks.

According to Activision’s financial report for the quarter, Blizzard experienced a 29 percent increase in monthly active users, an increase of 33 million due to the launches of Overwatch and the “Whispers of the Old Gods” expansion for Hearthstone, Blizzard’s online, free-to-play collectible card game. This only added to the active users in Activision’s other possessions, such as Bungie’s game Destiny, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and more.

With more content updates coming, those 15 million Overwatch players are likely to not be running out of content any time soon, especially if Blizzard and Activision want to keep raking in the money.